


Those Quiet Nights

by The_Ace_Anon



Series: self-indulgent ahit/apop au [6]
Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:55:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29637732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Ace_Anon/pseuds/The_Ace_Anon
Summary: Vanessa's dead, but he can't forget her. He'll never forget her.(More crossover! Deb, Derek, and Logan belong to Darkwarfy on tumblr)
Relationships: The Florist & The Prince (A Hat in Time), The Prince (A Hat in Time) & Original Character(s), The Prince/Queen Vanessa (A Hat in Time)
Series: self-indulgent ahit/apop au [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019415
Kudos: 1





	Those Quiet Nights

His fingers drift over the book, tracing the inked words etched into the parchment, his mind too scattered to focus on the words. He shivers in the quiet, pulls the blanket tighter around his curled up body. The room feels empty, dull,  _ cold _ . The fire in front of him roars and rises but it does nothing to off-set the permanent chill in his bones, the curtains are pulled tightly closed but he can still see the stars behind them, still see the snow falling outside. It’s winter, so of course it’s cold, of course snow and ice are going to form, of course things are going to freeze. It’s natural, simply nature doing what it does, it’s not  _ hers _ . He feels a cold hand wrap around his wrist. He jerks back, blanket and book falling, fire growing and rising with his panic, but when he turns there’s nothing. No hand, no cold, not even any shadows. He picks the blanket back up, wraps it back around himself, tries to ignore the feeling of eyes watching him, burning into his skull. 

He completely gives up on the book, leaves it on the floor where it fell, simply focuses on the fire and not the figure at the edges of his vision. She's not real, he knows she isn’t, but that doesn’t stop him from seeing her, from feeling as though she’s right behind him, ready to grab him at any moment. Vanessa is dead, has been for months, her body nothing more than a corrupted, charred mess when they found it, broken memories of bright light and  **burning** and her screams echoing in his mind. She’s dead and gone, but he can still feel her hands in his, still feel the pull of her ice growing on his skin. Can still feel her watching him, waiting for him to join her. The fire grows, but he’s still cold. The echoes of long dead hands wrap around his arms, pressing her shape into his skin, tearing off the old scars and replacing them with the new, blood dripping down his skin and staining the floor, flesh and bone and muscle splitting apart and- and- and- and he looks down at his arm. No hands, no blood, no bone, simply old, frost-tinted scars staring back at him. The shadows start to shake. He still feels the eyes on him.

He grips his arm, curls up even tighter, feels nothing as the fire burns brighter. There’s ice growing on the window, there isn’t but there is. He can’t see it but it’s still  _ there _ . He can hear the wind outside howl, hear the snow fall faster, feel the ice growing on the walls, feel a cold hand on his shoulder that isn’t there but is. He buries his head in his arms, his hands grip his hair, the shadows writhe and drip and whisper, climbing his limbs in frantic movements. The fire burns and screams and brightens but he can’t feel any of it. He can’t breathe, the cold forcing itself into his lungs, freezing all the air. There’s ice growing on his skin, snowflakes in his hair, frost in his eyes. His joints stiffen and crack, his muscles turn blue, his bones become ice. He’s so cold, the fire grows but he feels  _ nothing _ but cold in his chest freezing over what little fire he has left, crushing it and stomping it until it’s nothing but once-warm embers. Ice replaces fire, white overpowering red, winter tearing apart summer, it grows in his chest, covers his spine and his organs, filling his veins. The fire is so bright he can’t even look at it now but he still feels nothing but freezing and he’s so  _ tired _ of freezing so he puts his right arm into the fire.

He still feels nothing but a distant whisper of warmth that only seems to urge the ice on, makes it spike and grow and freeze faster. He closes his eyes, urges the fire to burn hotter and hotter, makes it grow to fight off the ice. For the first time that night, he finally feels some semblance of warmth, he breathes a quiet sigh of relief, his body relaxes. It’s the smell of burning flesh that makes him snap out of it. He opens his eyes. The room is unbearably hot, so hot he feels like he might choke on it. There’s no ice, no frost, no snow. The fire in the fireplace is so big, it’s a miracle nothing has caught yet, and his arm- oh- oh  _ no _ \- His arm is a charred mess, the skin all black and burned, peeling off his forearm. He pulls his arm out of the fire as quickly as possible, tries his best not to look at it, shakily stands up and heads towards the door. It doesn’t hurt, that’s bad right? He thinks that’s bad, he’s not sure. His brain is a muddled, panicked mess, he doesn’t know where to go or what to do or who to tell, so he does the first thing he thinks of. He goes to Cam. He knocks on her door, a cheery voice inside telling him to come in. Cam’s seated on her bed, her hair down, a book in her lap.

She smiles at him, asks what’s going on, and then she sees his arm. She stands, rushes over to him, stares at it, asks him what happened, if it hurts, sits him down on the bed and looks over the burn. He stammers out answers as her questions keep coming, simply saying ‘I burned myself’ when she asks what happened. Her hands drift over the burn, careful not to actually touch it. Cam backs away, tells him to stay there, that she’s going to get Logan just stay calm and  _ don’t touch it! _ She’s not gone for long, only a few minutes pass before she’s already coming back into the room, Logan in tow with Derek following close behind, both looking like they were dragged out of bed. They wake up considerably more when they see his arm. Logan only takes one look at it before he’s already barking out orders, tells Cam to get Debrah and asks Derek to grab some aloe cream and bandages from his room. The two quickly leave to carry out their tasks, leaving the princes alone.

The Helsoner takes another look at his arm, before taking off his sash and giving it to the Subconite, telling Thea to put it in his mouth and clamp down on it. He does so, knowing full well why the other is having him do it, that whatever Logan is about to do, it’s going to hurt, a  _ lot _ . The other prince puts his hands on his arm, and simply stands there. At first, nothing happens, but then, slowly and surely, a small trickle of feeling begins to form in his arm. He can feel the other’s hands on his skin, can feel the cool air pressing against the burned flesh, it’s almost a relief to have a bit of feeling again. And then the pain starts. It begins as an itch, then a dull burn, then a  **_scream_ ** . He fights the urge to kick, to jerk his arm away from Logan, curl up, and scream. It feels like his skin is being burned off, like his flesh is being cooked. Logan’s hands hurt horribly, like they’re being pushed into an open wound, tears form in his eyes, he screams into the fabric, and then the other lets go. 

It still hurts, still burns and screams and cries, but better now that the other is no longer touching the flayed skin. The burn itself looks much better now, just red and blistered instead of charred, but he can’t appreciate that over the pain, nor can he wonder how the hell Logan healed the burn that much with only his  _ hands _ . He tries to curl up, to pull his arm to his chest and roll onto the covers and cry. But the Helsoner stops him, gently grabbing him so he can’t pull away, and then gets him off the bed, leads him into the bathroom, and gently puts his arm into the basin. Thea can’t help the sigh of relief that escapes his lips, the water feels so nice on the blistered skin, lapping over his burned forearm in waves. He hears the door to the bedroom open, Logan tells him to keep his arm in the water and leaves, going to greet whoever just returned. The quiet gives him a moment to focus. The pain is still there, but no longer the heart-stopping scream it was just a few moments ago. Now it’s just a throb, a painful shutter making itself known under his skin. 

A few minutes pass before the Helsoner Prince returns, this time equipped with cream and bandages. He asks him to take his arm out of the water, and, reluctantly, he does. Logan takes his burned arm and carefully applies the cream to it, making sure to cover all of the once-blackened skin. Once all of the burns have been covered, he wraps up the forearm in bandages, careful to wrap the bandages around his reddened and blistered fingers as well. Thea simply sits there as the prince takes care of his arm, distantly watching everything happen. Logan talks to him as he works, telling the other how to take care of it while it heals and what not to do. The bedroom door opens again, he hears hushed conversation, questions about what’s going on and what happened. He remembers the “ice” growing on the walls, the feeling of being watched, the snow, and twitches. Logan asks him how his arm got so badly burned, he just says it was an accident, he hadn’t been paying attention to the fireplace and before he knew it the flame had caught onto his clothes, whoops, silly him, he’ll have to be more careful from now on.

Logan stares at him, obviously not believing a word he says, and is probably about to say as much when, thankfully, Cam peaks into the room and asks how he’s doing. The Helsoner relays his condition to her, telling her he’s fine now he just needs to heal, rest, and be careful so he doesn’t hurt it again. Quietly, Thea asks if he’s free to leave the bathroom now and, at Logan’s affirmation, walks out. He ignores Cam’s questions, walks over to the bed where Debrah and Derek are seated, having a quiet conversation, and flops down face-first onto the bed, careful to fall in a way that doesn’t trap his bandaged arm under him, leaving his legs still on the floor with only his troso on the bed itself. Derek asks if he’s ok, he just groans into the blankets. The bed dips as Cam sits next to him, then moves a bit more as Logan plops down too, telling Thea that falling face-first onto a bed isn’t what he’d call “careful”. He just groans again in response. Cam quietly asks him again what happened. He looks up at her and asks if he could tell her later, he still feels the cold and the hands in the back of his mind and doesn’t want to slip again tonight. Cam looks at him for a moment, before giving him a sympathetic smile and a nod. Relieved, he lets his head fall back onto the bed and lays there as the others’ conversation drifts in the air. 

Gently, Debrah nudges him on the shoulder and asks if he’s in the mood for appy juice. In the most serious tone he can muster, Thea looks up at her and says he’s always in the mood for appy juice. He sits up, pulling the lower half of his body onto the bed, and watches as a stone cup comes together in her hands, filling up with juice when it’s finished. She hands it to him and asks if anyone else wants something. He’s careful to take it with his good hand, trying to use his burned one as little as possible, and sips at the juice while she makes some more appy juice for Derek, milk for Logan and then hot chocolate for Cam and herself. Once the drinks are made and passed out, he asks Logan about the cream the prince put on his burns, both curious and wanting to start the conversation up again.

Logan  _ lights up _ , starts talking about aloe vera and how most tend to use it for decoration but it’s actually capable of helping with skin conditions like burns, and other uses it has and how he asked Cam to grow some for him. Cam hides a smirk at that, says it was less a request and more a “grow this for me or I won’t show you any more of my plants”. Logan gasps at that, looking offended, says he can be polite! Deb raises an eyebrow, Derek looks at him with doubt, Thea pops in with how polite Logan was to him when they first met. Logan thanks him, says he’s glad at least  _ one _ of his friends- Thea continues with how  _ nice _ it was of Logan to call him The-A instead of his actual name. Debrah snorts, the Helsoner Prince sputters, looking absolutely betrayed, crosses his arms and says he thought that was how you pronounced it! Now it’s the Subcontie’s turn to doubt, he asks if Logan  _ really _ thought that someone would name their child  _ The A _ . Logan snorts, says it’s not any stupider than naming someone “Vanessa”. 

He asks if that’s why Logan called Vanessa a bitch, multiple times, to her face. Logan defends himself, saying that Vanessa  _ was _ a bitch so he can’t count that. As Thea just raises an eyebrow, Cam breaks into a laugh, asks if Logan  _ really _ called Vanessa a bitch to her face, says she wished she could’ve done that. Logan says yeah, asks if Thea never told her the story, and at that Thea groans and puts his face in his hand because he  _ knows _ what Logan’s talking about. The Helsoner goes on to explain how one day they’d been hanging out with Thea when Vanessa came around and tried to get him to leave, she’d been pulling him away when Logan quietly called her a bitch. Vanessa heard him and asked him what the fuck did he just call her. Logan pretended to be shocked and said oh no bitch is a  _ compliment  _ in Helsoner, he was  _ complimenting _ her, oh did she not know that, that’s so sad, he didn’t mean anything  _ bad _ by it. Vanessa clearly didn’t believe him, but  _ Thea _ did, so the next time he saw Derek he went up to them and said “Hi bitch!!” Cam breaks out laughing, Thea screams into his hands, Derek gives him a sympathetic pat on the back. 

Logan continues, going on to mention how for an entire week Thea thought “bitch” was a compliment until Debrah had to ruin it and tell him the truth because “Logan if he calls a noble a bitch, thinking it’s a compliment, he’s going to get in so much trouble we  _ have _ to tell him”. Cam laughs at that, says that Deb had a point, continues with her own story of how she managed to tell Vanessa to fuck off without saying “fuck off”, and slowly but surely, the conversation shifts to bitching about Vanessa. At first, it’s fine. He can't really blame the others for wanting to complain about her a bit, after all she put them through, he even laughs a little at some of the comments. But as it goes on, he has to...hold his tongue. To stop himself from defending her, to stop himself from saying well Vanessa didn’t  _ really _ mean to say it that way or well that’s a little unfair you shouldn’t hold that against her. He remembers hearing about some of these stories from Vanessa, how she told him they insulted her and hurt her and why is he still spending time with them doesn’t he love her? Does he? His skin itches.

Almost out of nowhere, Derek interrupts the conversation, asks Logan about the space books he’s been reading lately. The change in topic is odd, feels out of place, yet is very clearly purposeful. Logan seems confused, even after Derek gives him a not-so-subtle glance at Thea, but willing to go along with the topic change. Logan starts talking about the books Thea gave him, how they have information that conflicts with his own books and he’s been trying to figure out which one is more accurate. Thea looks up at that, asks if he can see Logan’s books when he’s done then, says he’s curious in what different information the two countries have. It’s not long before they’re rambling about space, talking about how the moon phases are  _ actually _ the sun’s light reflecting off the moon and how “shooting stars” are really comets that are burning up as they come down onto the planet and how some planets have rings around them made out of space dust and rocks and maybe other things and he can’t help but wonder if they formed because of gravitational pull or something else. It’s at that point that Camila pops in with a “doesn’t the sun go around the Earth?” Logan  _ freezes _ , turns to her with a horrified look in his eye, and says she  _ can’t be serious. _ She isn’t, Thea knows that Cam knows that bullshit theory is nothing more than half-formed lies, but he also very much enjoys fucking with Logan, so he says nothing.

Cam goes on to say that yes, she’s very serious, she’s never been more serious in her life, the sun clearly rises on one side of the sky and falls on another, so it  _ has _ to be the Sun spinning around them. Logan says No! That’s not how it works!! We’re the ones spinning around the sun, just because it looks that way doesn’t mean the sun’s actually spinning around us! Derek agrees, and Logan’s in the middle of thanking them when they continue on to say that clearly, the Earth is flat, so it can’t spin at all. Logan looks absolutely  _ betrayed _ , Thea says that Derek has a point and Logan whips around to face him, clenching a hand over his heart. Deb joins the flat Earth gang and this time Logan  _ stands _ . Goes on a mini-rant about his stupid, earth-flater friends and how it makes No sense for the Earth to be flat and it’s clearly not flat and this is a personal attack against him and when He’s King he’s going to make it illegal to say that the Earth is flat. Debrah tells him that’s not very cash money of him, Logan throws a pillow at her.

Deb throws the pillow back at him, but he dodges it and it hits Derek, who tries to throw it back at Deb only to hit Thea. It takes less than five seconds for a pillow fight to start. Cam grabs the other pillows and throws them into the fray. Logan hits Derek on the face with a pillow and is smug for half a second before Derek recovers and picks him up, holding him despite the much smaller man’s pure rage at being picked up like a sack of potatoes. Cam tackles Derek, forcing them to drop Logan and manages to push them down with the help of a vine. Deb throws a pillow right at Thea’s face making him fall off the bed, taking the blanket with him, and tries to grab another pillow but is stopped by Logan tackling and sitting on her. He gets a split second to gloat before Debs throws him off and sits on him instead, his gloating quickly turning into loud complaining. Derek pushes Cam off, only to get immediately tackled  _ again _ by Thea, still covered with the blanket. They grab onto Thea, picking him up, and switching their positions so now  _ Thea’s _ the one on the floor. Cam joins the pile, holding onto Derek’s back. Deb gives up her Logan Chair to join too and soon enough everyone’s in the Smush Thea pile.

Thea would be mad that he so miserably lost the fight, but being smushed is surprisingly comfortable so he can’t be too upset. Above him Logan and Deb are debating over who won and how unfair it was that she just sat on him and if that’s so “unfair” why did he try to do it too and that’s not the POINT Debs!! Derek quietly asks if he’s ok under everyone, Thea gives them a thumbs up. He’s breathing ok and he doesn’t really feel like moving anyways so he simply lays there as the others debate over who “won”. He yawns, too comfy to stay aware, and lets his eyes close. The arguing falls away to static, the world darkness and blurs and fades away like a candle being put out. It comes back a little when the comfortable weight on his chest moves and disappears. He feels a tinge of annoyance at the disappearance and wakes up slightly to see what happened, only to feel himself being picked up and placed somewhere softer, a new and lighter weight being placed on him. The ground moves slightly and there’s a hand in his hair, gently petting him. He hums, pushes his head into the hand, and lets the world fade again. It all goes to peaceful, quiet, static, and his vision goes black.


End file.
